Episode 224 - Transcript

Hello everyone. I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This! 

So today we’re gonna start talking about Albert Camus and how PERFECTLY he fits into this conversation we’ve been having lately. 

See when people talk about Camus…LOT of people know about his book The Stranger; I mean, it’s one of the most FAMOUS books in history, it’s expected…but NOT as many people know about something ELSE that’s exciting from him…which is the book he wrote just BEFORE he wrote The Stranger.

It’s a book that he chose to NEVER publish during his lifetime, for reasons we’ll see…it was only published AFTER his death by his estate.

But nonetheless if your goal was to understand Camus the best you could…then reading THIS book in PARTICULAR…is gonna be important for knowing how his thinking was EVOLVING during the late 1930’s…and this book has CONTEXT in it that’s often MISSED… if you wanted to understand his full PROJECT as a thinker.

The book is called A Happy Death…and it’s a book that surprisingly…of ALL things…MOSTLY focuses on the idea…of HAPPINESS. 

Now if you’re confused here a little bit you have a good right to be: I mean… why would Camus…start, write, and FINISH a book about happiness… then choose to NEVER PUBLISH IT…then to only have his NEXT book be written about a character…who seems to care…almost NOTHING…about happiness? 

Well, we’ll understand why by the end of this here today.

I mean if you’re reading The Stranger, if that’s the reason you CAME to this episode, just in the first few PAGES of this book…you’ll notice it’s written from the perspective of a guy named Meursault…and that this guy Meursault is a character that is FAMOUSLY indifferent… about the STATE of the world around him.

You’ve no doubt heard the first LINE of this book…people’ll have a CONNIPTION fit talking about it: Mother died yesterday, or was it the day before…I can’t remember. ALL over the world…conniption fits HAPPEN EVERY DAY about this LINE because this is great writing from Camus– just a FEW words into the book– we ALREADY know quite a BIT about who Meursault is as a character. 

He doesn’t play the GAME of society like other people do. Doesn’t put on any affect just to PLEASE people. In fact Meursault represents an indifference towards the typical ways people get their MEANING in the world… that to a reader… makes you feel like there’s something DEEPLY unrelatable about his experience– I mean what person doesn’t care about their mother to the point they don’t even know what DAY she died?

And when people COMMENT on this book after READING it…you’ll often hear them SAY about Meursault…that he is some kind of an absurd HERO for Camus. That by facing the absurdity of the universe, and by EMBODYING it TO this level…that at the end of the book… when he’s sentenced to death he STARES the absurdity of the world in the face and is truly HAPPY, feeling a kind of HARMONY with the absurd…they’ll say this is a kind of EXAMPLE that Camus is putting OUT there for people to emulate. That we should ALL seek to be in HARMONY with the absurd like this.

But this isn’t the full PICTURE of what Camus was GOING for in the character of Meursault. In fact for whatever it’s worth I think there’s a lot MISSING from this take— I think a LOT of Camus gets MISSED when you ONLY read his novels…that there’s a LOT of context to be found in the lectures that he gave, the lesser known ESSAYS that he wrote over the years. 

More than that I think the symbolism of the SUN in the book The Stranger is something that’s OFTEN overlooked and can ONLY be appreciated when knowing his interest in the Mediterranean lifestyle during this period of this thought…and I think that even Sartre…Jean Paul Sartre who wrote one of the most FAMOUS REVIEWS EVER of The Stranger…I think Sartre reads a bit too much of HIS OWN work…INTO the work of Camus, and I think his REVIEW of The Stranger, still causes people to misunderstand it all these years later. 

What I’m saying is…that Camus once famously said… that he’s an artist…not a philosopher. 

And some people think he was being MODEST when he SAYS that, like oh no…I’m not a PHILOSOPHER, my ideas aren’t THAT good! But no, this was a very SPECIFIC, INTENTIONAL thing for Camus to SAY about his work. 

He didn’t WANT to be a philosopher. He thought the PHILOSOPHERS of his time were lost in abstractions…lost in a type of fatalism and realism that ALLOWED for the rise of Hitler and people LIKE him. 

We’ll talk more about this as we paint the bigger picture of Camus’ overall project, but the thing to understand right now… is that Camus REFUSED… what he saw as the temptation to become a philosopher in his work…because he disagreed with the ENTIRE dangerous GAME that he thought they were playing. 

And understanding this detail of his work BEGINS…with his book A Happy Death written just before The Stranger. So let’s get into it. 

Now on the SURFACE…a happy death shares quite a few similarities to the Stranger. The main character of the book is ALSO named Mersault. This book ALSO has sunlight that’s used often as symbolism. And Mersault, similarly, KILLS someone on a beach as a major PLOT point near the BEGINNING of the novel. 

But the similarities end here. Because in a happy death…Mersault doesn’t kill someone who's trying to attack him with a knife like what happens in the Stranger…THIS Mersault is killing someone…out of MERCY. It’s an AGREEMENT that the two of them have. 

Zagreus, the man he kills, is a very wealthy, disabled man, he’s in QUITE a bit of pain every day…and he’s a man who LIVES a life where he’s MOSTLY confined to his home. 

Now this is by NO means a HAPPY life that he’s living… but Zagreus…STILL thinks he knows a lot about HAPPINESS. 

So in the final moments of his life, he tells Mersault his THEORY of happiness…after agreeing that if Mersault kills him he can have all his MONEY after he’s gone. Part of the story is that Zagreus just can’t pull the trigger on his own.

And he tells him this: come HERE ma boy before you kill me sit on ma knee! Happiness lies in THREE things Zagreus says: one…happiness lies in money. 

Look LOT of people out there will morally grandstand here and talk about how money doesn’t BUY happiness…but to Zagreus… it’s no coincidence…that the people that often SAY this kind of stuff…always HAVE money. NOBODY that’s ever had to STRUGGLE to even EAT or to find SHELTER…EVER TALKS about money like this. It’s OBVIOUSLY way easier to find happiness if you have enough money to secure basic stuff. 

So THIS point… leads Zagreus to number TWO on his list of stuff…he says that happiness ALSO lies in having TIME. Because once you secure the basic necessities of life…somebody ALWAYS NEEDS TIME. Time to spend pursuing your OWN interests, time that’s NOT just spent working for someone else all day. And time, here, also implies you have enough good HEALTH…to take ADVANTAGE of the opportunity to HAVE interests to pursue in the FIRST place. 

The last thing Zagreus thinks we need to be happy…is solitude. Because if you’re always distracted and you’re always fulfilling some social requirement that people have of you…then you NEVER have time to fully possess YOURSELF: and as he says…how can you ever BE HAPPY…if you’re constantly BEING something for someone else all the time. 

So Mersault…HEARS all this…he honors the wishes of Zagreus…TAKES his life and also his money…and then lives out the rest of the book TESTING the limitations of this theory of his. And WHAT he finds…to speed this up so we can talk about the Stranger more…is that Zagreus’ theory of happiness, while it’s not stupid, not completely unfounded…it HAS some obvious HOLES in it. 

See, Camus …throughout the process of WRITING this book just in his REAL life…he’s learning MORE about happiness as he GOES, and one of the things he does is he goes and visits some religious MONKS at a monastery and pays close attention to the way that THEY seem to be achieving happiness. 

And upon WATCHING these people…he realizes that these monks are happy…EVEN when they have almost NOTHING. That in the SAME WAY someone can have all the money, time and solitude in the world and STILL find themselves in a place where they’re totally miserable…someone can have basically NOTHING…and it seems that if their WILL… towards happiness is there…that really DOES seem to be the PRIMARY factor here all things considered.

I mean he writes in an essay called The Desert at one point: what is happiness…but just a certain kind of HARMONY between a person and the life they lead?

Now this is a beautiful quote, captures something important about what it is to live life…and for a LOT of people this would probably just be a very inspiring MOMENT. Wait I can BE HAPPY FOREVER…if I just WILL myself to be HAPPY all the time? C’mon guys let’s get to WORK on that!

But for Camus in his OWN development…the reaction is quite different. 

I can imagine for him this INSIGHT about happiness…probably started some pretty intense SKEPTICISM…towards the idea of happiness altogether. After all: if happiness is just a matter of WILL…if happiness JUST comes down to how we’re FRAMING our REALITY…then hypothetically… the world could be burning down all around me, everyone I know and love is in complete misery…and AS LONG as my WILL MYSELF to FRAME things in the right way…then I can be happy forever, but like: what IS that? If that is TRUE…then IS, HAPPINESS…the ultimate goal of ANY serious person that out there? This STARTS to seem like a goal that someone could ONLY have if they were very YOUNG, AVOIDING responsibility. 

I mean happiness it seems to Camus…is JUST another set of THEORETICAL abstractions…and then your ability to WILL yourself to only see THEM. 

But what about what’s actually HAPPENING in the world? Shouldn’t THAT matter to us too? 

It’s ALMOST like Camus here experienced one of Wittgenstein’s ladders. 

There’s a famous metaphor from the history of philosophy: Wittgenstein, near the end of the tractatus implies that what philosophy DOES sometimes when we do it… when you TAKE a philosophical discussion to the point where you’ve arrived at some new INSIGHT about the world…often times you can look BACK… at the conversation that GOT you to that place…and from this new vantage point, that WHOLE conversation you used to be having starts to seem naive…or silly to you. It’s like a ladder he says that you climb up where once you’ve USED the ladder to get to another perspective of the world, you kick the ladder out from under you, and you don’t NEED it any more. 

And it’s NOTHING against people that are still HAVING these conversations about happiness…it’s likely that those conversations are the ONLY way you EVER get to this OTHER place. But it SEEMS like Camus here… is starting to think of happiness as MORE of a matter of will and focus…and not some ultimate, existential GOAL that we should all be AIMING for as our biggest concern. To focus ONLY on happiness… is to ignore something DEEPER about the human condition more generally. 

See this is why the OTHER Meursault…the one at the end of The Stranger…when he ACCEPTS the absurdity of the world and SEES himself within it and goes INTO his execution feeling totally HAPPY…this is NOT Camus CHAMPIONING this man as the way that he thinks human beings should aspire to LIVE. No to Camus this is JUST someone…who’s achieved a certain kind of HARMONY…with the PARTICULAR life he’s leading. 

And you can SEE this all throughout the BOOK with the behavior of Meursault…he’s very much in HARMONY with being indifferent with things. He agrees to MARRY a woman just because SHE wants to. He kills a man on the BEACH just because the sun’s in his eyes in a tense moment. He lures a woman into an apartment where he KNOWS she’s going to get beaten and hurt. 

And again he’s completely INDIFFERENT… to DOING ALL of these things. 

See to Camus: Meursault is a PICTURE of HAPPINESS, of HARMONY with the life he leads…and yet ANYBODY who READS this man’s experience from the FIRST SENTENCE of the BOOK…you KNOW that something very HUMAN, is LACKING in this guy. And the question it starts to RAISE in the reader is: well what exactly is it that’s MISSING from this guy Mersault. 

The ANSWER for Camus: is going to be REVOLT against the absurd.

But to get to his idea of REVOLT… FIRST let me talk for a second about the absurd, and some MUCH needed context about the larger PROJECT of Camus that this book fits INTO.  

Camus is an absurdist. And you may have heard people describe the absurd…as the term he uses for the CONSTANT TENSION we live in…that’s created by our natural desire for MEANING, and the meaninglessness of the universe…the COLLISION of these two things causes a TENSION…and that TENSION is what he calls the absurd. 

But it SHOULD be said it’s a bit MORE than just this for Camus. Meaning is no DOUBT a really COMMON place people will encounter the absurd in their life…but in the interest of linking his work here to this larger conversation we’ve been having on the podcast lately…for Camus the absurd is something we encounter…ANY time, there’s something that SEEMS to be part of our natural constitution as BEINGS, but then we’re met with a world that can’t PROVIDE it for us. 

So seen in THIS way: NOT ONLY does that apply to questions about MEANING, but how about when we desire to KNOW things. I mean in theory we’d love to know EVERYTHING about the world around us…but at a certain point:  it is a part of AFFIRMING the world around as it IS…that we have to acknowledge our own limitations: the limitations of the tools we have, of our senses, of the limited samples available to us, of our capacity to reason, of theoretical abstractions in general as a way of FRAMING pieces of our reality. 

See for Camus: the existential problem we face is NOT JUST… that we live in a world where a lot of stuff is still UNKNOWN to us, THAT would be ONE thing…the PROBLEM is ALSO that given the kind of LIMITED creature YOU ARE…there are certain things…that are ALWAYS going to be UNKNOWABLE to you given the tools you have. 

Now, THAT is a very difficult encounter to have with the absurd to have AS WELL. And now think of how that applies to ETHICS. Think of how that applies to our relationship to DEATH.

It’s rather uncomfortable to be in this place. This is a kind of suffering.

And as it turns OUT for Camus: ANOTHER thing about the kind of creatures we seem to be is that we strive to AVOID suffering.

And it’s the avoidance of this personal suffering…this PIECE of what we ARE…well it’s WELL DOCUMENTED that THIS is the origin of the GAME that Camus thinks philosophers and religious people are PLAYING. 

They create SYSTEMS out of theoretical ABSTRACTIONS…or GRAND UNIFYING RELIGIOUS NARRATIVES…and this is all TRANSPARENTLY… an EFFORT by them…to get out of this UNCOMFORTABLE place of FACING the world as it is, of LIVING in this absurd tension. 

See philosophers and religious people generally SEE this tension… as a PROBLEM that needs to be SOLVED or FIXED. 

But Camus asks: what if you DIDN’T try to fix it all the time? What if the goal ISN’T just to encounter the absurd, and then CREATE a system of meaning to get AWAY from it. 

But what if meaning…like HAPPINESS…was NOT the ultimate goal someone was shooting for? 

What if INSTEAD someone made LUCIDITY the primary focus, or seeing the world AS IT IS? 

How would that CHANGE things in their life?

This is going to be Camus’ own UNIQUE version of AFFIRMING reality without idealizing it or demonizing it or creating rational abstractions where we EXPECT the universe to BE something that it’s NOT. He WANTS to avoid the temptation that even philosophers fall into, where they pretty much ALWAYS get to a point in their work…where they create a set of abstractions that lets them RUN from the absurd.  

And it’s this COMMITMENT to LUCIDITY in Camus…well this is gonna lead him to a similar MOVE we’ve seen lately on this podcast…where he’s going to try to REMOVE the abstractions from how he views reality… and this will eventually LAND him in a type of EXPERIENCE…where it looks a LOT like the sort of embodied present MOMENT that we’ve been talking about lately– but should be said… his VERSION of this… is gonna be something very different than anything ELSE we’ve seen on this series so far. 

You know just because we’re ON this point…Albert Camus was someone who was WELL AWARE of this ENTIRE conversation we’ve been HAVING lately. 

I mean this is a guy that called Dostoevsky… a prophet of the 19th century at one point. He spent a lot of time and money during his life… to GET Dostoevsky’s book DEMONS turned into a live action play, and for anybody coming fresh off of that series we just did: you know that Demons, among ALL his books, is probably the one where you MOST have to be a SUPERFAN of Dostoevsky to truly understand and appreciate it. 

More than that: Camus ALSO is one of the people responsible…for contributing money and time to make sure the work of Simone Weil was preserved after she died. We might not HAVE her work in the way we do if it wasn’t for Camus. He once said that she was the closest thing to a living saint that he had SEEN in his lifetime.

So what I mean is: this is a MAN who understands and APPRECIATES this religious, self-emptying that we’ve been TALKING about. He just ULTIMATELY doesn’t accept it himself– in fact he’d be very SUSPICIOUS of it… and he’d probably have something to say like: how convenient. 

You know, how convenient… that the primary existential dilemma that we FACE as people is this DESIRE for a unifying sense of connection…and how convenient that you’ve FOUND it.

I think he’d say look it doesn’t matter how INTELLIGENT your religious move is…it doesn’t matter how much READING it takes to GET there or how much WORK you put in EVERY DAY to HONOR the unity that you’ve FOUND…it’s STILL, AT BOTTOM for Camus, the SAME attempt to create unity out of the absurd. It’s the same move. 

And while he has a LOT of RESPECT for these thinkers and their work…he ultimately thinks the stakes of MAKING this move, of giving into the temptation of BECOMING a PHILOSOPHER or a religious FOLLOWER like this…the stakes are just too high. 

This became very EVIDENT to Camus…when he saw his generation more or less roll over and ALLOW…for Adolph HITLER, to just show up and do his thing in the world. I mean from HIS perspective: weak, utilitarian arguments often made by philosophers…didn’t WORK against Hitler. The Fatalism of his time made people passive, sitting around waiting for the end of history. And then Realism made people Nihilistic, incapable of acting on ANYTHING. 

These philosophers that were SUPPOSEDLY the moral leadership…who FACED the absurd, felt uncomfortable, and then CREATED a system of moral universals…they obviously couldn’t get the JOB done. And why IS THAT? 

Well because when it comes down to it to Camus…these are ALL people wrapped up in playing the SAME kind of twisted game we DO with philosophy and politics. 

To illustrate what he MEANS here…maybe it’s best to think of what somebody could say BACK to Camus and all he’s said here so far. 

In other words somebody could say: what are YOU doing to oppose Hitler, Camus? I mean I get it: you’re criticizing philosophers…but what alternative do YOU have? 

I mean all I’ve heard out of you SO far are these basic ideas where you say what kind of creatures we are. We SEEM to be the kind of creatures that avoid suffering. We SEEM to be the kind of creatures that seek meaning. But what foundation do you have…for making ANY of those claims? You HAVE no justification for them…you’d laid out NOTHING here… and yet you CRITICIZE philosophy. 

As a man that seems to be basing a LOT of his thinking…just on the way that you SEEM to be FEELING NATURALLY…can you, REALLY, EVER morally condemn HITLER and what he did…based on that way of looking at things? What if HITLER feels like he naturally wants to invade France?

Well Camus might say you asked me a lot of questions let me answer them one at a time: you asked me what justifications I have for saying these are the kinds of creatures we are. Well if what you’re asking me there…is am I willing to play the same game that YOU do…where you PRETEND as though you’ve created a system that gives you a NEAT philosophical justification that makes things RIGHT…where no MATTER the nuance of the situation, your philosophical RULES apply to EVERY SINGLE SCENARIO…well then NO. I’m not PLAYING that game. In fact: THAT’S the very kind of GAME…that got us INTO this mess in the FIRST place. 

I mean IF we’re willing to acknowledge… that we live in an absurd universe…and that NO APPROACH to human behavior is EVER going to fix ALL our problems. Camus would say what’s more dangerous? NOT having a counter-moral system that I can throw in the face of someone like Hitler and tell him he’s wrong? Or CONTINUING ON with this mass delusion that PHILOSOPHY…is something that can provide a justification of people’s behavior? 

THAT’S the mistake we’re making to Camus…and it’s one that’s FAR MORE DANGEROUS because it KEEPS people in a place where they live their lives BELIEVING these kinds of justifications are POSSIBLE.

What Camus wants to do in his work, is something more RADICAL…he wants to find a NEW WAY of BEING…that DOESN’T require always trying to GROUND it in some set of abstractions we have about the world. 

And you know in the years leading up to WRITING this book, The Stranger, Camus is FASCINATED by an example of something he thinks gets fairly CLOSE to this way of being. Something that he calls the Mediterranean spirit or mediterranean way of being. He has a famous speech he gives about it in 1937. 

And you know FAR from this being some DOCTRINE he thinks we should follow, it’s NOT like that…he just thinks GENERALLY that… people that have lived in certain mediterranean cultures over the years, when you SEE their lifestyle, when you take in their artwork… these are humans that SEEM to have found a way to LIVE their lives… where look it’s not like they’re NOT thinking about things, they’re NOT living life in IGNORANCE…but they just CHOOSE to place more VALUE…on different things than most Europeans might typically. 

If IN Europe it is common for people to live in a kind of guilt about their bodies, or to seek transcendence BEYOND this world as seen in Christianity and German Idealism…well then the MEDITERRANEAN spirit… is one that more values joy, or the physical world around you, it values the landscape itself: in other words there’s an immanence to the way these people see their lives unfolding…where to Camus: they’re MUCH less interested in using all their TIME on this planet chopping up the world around them and manipulating it…they’re much more EMBODIED. Much more present. To Camus: these are people that are much more capable of noticing and enjoying something like the sun on their face…the wind in their clothes…and they’re much more capable of truly FEELING, that life ITSELF in this way…is ENOUGH. 

Now in terms of this as an example…this ISN’T an ETHICS where Camus is saying this is HOW you SHOULD behave. And for MOST of the people in Europe that he’s talking to…living in this way would require something more like a STRIPPING AWAY of the ethical systems they’re already IMPOSING on reality. 

And in his novels: one way to view the SUN for him…is that it becomes a SYMBOL for this…or at least for a way of being that is possible that bears RESEMBLANCE to the mediterranean spirit. The sun becomes a kind of looming invitation to the characters for an alternative way to live that’s MORE centered around immanence.

There’s SEVERAL moments in the stranger that we can SEE this in if we wanted to. For example: early on in the book when his mother dies…there’s a period of time where he notices that its really HOT outside right now…so what this MEANS for him in the book is that he’s gotta get these funeral arrangements planned really quickly...cause his mom’s body is already starting to decay. 

And the SUN here becomes almost like another CHARACTER in the book itself…it becomes something, standing by, overSEEING the EVENTS in the book… where when Mersault could otherwise DETACH from reality like he normally does, or when a more typical person might need some time here to rationally JUSTIFY their mothers death…the heat of the sun represents the unending process of the immanence of reality, the AFFIRMATION of immanence…the idea being that: you know whether you’re acknowledging that your mom is dead or not…the bodies are STILL decaying, Meursault.

Little later ON in the book at his mom’s funeral…there’s a scene where the sun is BEATING DOWN on him as he’s STANDING over by where they’re doing the service. And he’s so detached from what’s going on in the moment…that in his inner monologue were reading he’s MORE paying attention to how HOT it is outside than to his own mom’s funeral. 

Well the sun is AGAIN here is like an additional CHARACTER in the book. Where again if instead of DETACHING…what if we paid attention to what was really going ON around us? What if Mersault COMMITTED himself to lucidity at his mom’s funeral? 

How DIFFERENT might his EXPERIENCE of that funeral be…is there another, more affirmative version of that experience that’s available to him? And in the book its as though the POSSIBILITY of recognizing this immanence is ALWAYS right in front of him…but he never actually SEES it. 

Another example is when he KILLS the man on the beach and the sun glistens off the knife and blinds him in a really annoying way. So he SHOOTS the guy. This is the reason he GIVES by the way when he’s being interrogated at his trial: they ask him why he KILLED the guy. And he says cause the SUN was in my eyes. To which everyone just laughs. 

But this is the equivalent of the sun as a character…hauling back and smacking Mersault in the face. The possibility…of AFFIRMING reality more fully, of affirming the LIFE of this man he’s about to kill…the sun is practically BEGGING him in this moment to engage deeper than his normal level of detachment. And yet he DOESN’T. He STAYS INHUMAN. There’s a sense in which what CAUSES him to commit this murder…IS a FAILURE to fully embrace what the sun okay a symbol of here. 

Now there’s of course OTHER SYMBOLISM that Camus is GOING for in the character of Meursault that’s well known: Meursault is DEFINITELY meant to be a HUMAN EMBODIMENT…of the absurd. 

Where you know the WHOLE process…of Meursault killing someone… and then being sentenced to death in a trial that’s FILLED with a jury of people that not only don’t like him or understand him but ultimately WANT him to be found guilty…this is obviously for Camus, a SYMBOL of the way, that society is always ENDICTING the absurd whenever it shows up. We’re always running from it. Putting it on trial. Finding ways to get rid of it so we don’t have to look at it— just like Meursault. At bottom: Society cannot tolerate people… who refuse to conform to its emotional expectations.

But again ONE key thing here to remember…even WITH this layered symbolism that ISNT on the surface…NONE of Meursault as a character…was supposed to be an instruction manual for how a person should live.

No, in a sense we should ALWAYS remember…Meursault IS the absurd. He literally says he finds himself IN the absurd in the book. And the POINT here for Camus is CLEARLY…that to BE human and to BE reading this book, is to find yourself at some point… not relating to Meursault and the way he feels. And there’s a REASON he WORKS IN this unrelatability. 

Because this brings me back to the point I made before that what’s MISSING from Meursault as a human being…what’s MISSING…is what Camus calls REVOLT against the absurd. 

Now you may say back to this HOLD ON uh, Camus. You are NOT about to TELL me…that you have moral INSTRUCTIONS for how I should be living after you just got done TRASHING every philosopher that tries to DO that, right?

To which Camus would say: right. I’m NOT going to do that. 

Because a key thing to remember here is that when Camus says that something is MISSING from the behavior of Meursault…he is not making an ETHICAL claim there…he’s making a DESCRIPTIVE claim. 

See we already know that affirming the absurd…means to affirm this TENSION between things like meaning that we desire, and the reality of the fact the universe doesn’t have it.

Well to BE living AUTHENTICALLY in that TENSION…doesn’t mean that you stop DESIRING meaning. It means that you CONTINUE ON LIVING, WITH that DESIRE…KNOWING that the universe CAN never and WILL never GIVE it to you. 

To affirm reality then for Camus… is to acknowledge that the universe doesn’t care…but I DO. 

I AM the kind of creature that DOES care about the things around me. 

And what you FIND is when you DON’T try to RUN from that fact…but instead try to live as LUCIDLY as you possibly can WITHIN it…his point is: IF you continued on living there, doing ANYTHING AUTHENTIC in your life BEYOND that point…well that would be, by DEFAULT, an act of REVOLT against the absurd. Just DESCRIPTIVELY, THAT’S what’s going on there.

This is why Camus STARTS this line of thinking with his famous question that he says EVERYBODY should be asking: whether or not to commit suicide. And of course his ANSWER is that you SHOULDN’T…and then of course the NEXT step of that for him is that you ALSO shouldn’t just commit PHILOSOPHICAL suicide EITHER. 

And what he MEANS by this is fascinating: that to AFFIRM REALITY…means that you WOULDN’T need some grand philosophical justification to help you escape it. You wouldn’t need some religious UNITY or  some NARRATIVE. No to live authentically…just like in the Mediterranean lifestyle…LIFE ITSELF… would be enough for you. And MORE than that: my obvious EXPERIENCE of CARING, ABOUT things in the world AROUND me…well why wouldn’t THAT be enough to ground whether something is worth doing…you wouldn’t need to GROUND it in fake moral universals that keep people living in moral delusion. 

So it’s THIS KIND of revolt AGAINST the absurd WITHOUT COMMITTING philosophical suicide…THIS becomes the BACKDROP…that Mersault’s character is supposed to be a CONTRAST against. This will ALSO be the place he begins writing his OTHER works from in The Rebel and The Plague…and it bears repeating I guess: this is the PLACE that he begins a pretty RADICAL PROJECT he has for the REST of his CAREER: what does LIFE affirming behavior truly LOOK like…when you START from a place where you’re not going to RELY on abstractions. 

Is this even POSSIBLE…you could ask. Well this is the question Camus chooses to GRAPPLE with…for his entire life. It was WORTH it to him. Because while it’s a DIFFICULT one…and it may not make him the PICTURE of HAPPINESS all the time…the ALTERNATIVE of slipping back into some kind of cheap fatalism or realism…or committing philosophical suicide…all of that was unthinkable to him. He was about to find out what it would BE like for him to proceed in this world as an artist…and not a philosopher. 

Anyway I hope this brings some CLARITY to the way the stranger sets up the rest of the story of Camus. Let me know if you want to hear the next chapter in this story: should I DO an episode on The Plague. ALWAYS incredibly grateful for the people that tell me what they want. I know for some of you out there, you leave a comment once letting me know…and what are you gonna do? Comment every time re-telling me what you like? I mean you have a LIFE to live at a certain point. I appreciate the people that take the time to do it though.

Patreon.com/philosophizethis. And as always: thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.